Just peachy

The house I live in is 92 years old and we are only the third owners. The owner before us was my grandmother, she owned it from 1955 until she died in January 1987. We bought the house after she died and have been here ever since. All three kids were born and grew up while we lived in this house. Maggie never knew any other home.

Periodically I am reminded of all that history. The trigger can be anything. Today it was peaches.

I went out on the deck while the coffee was brewing and noticed peaches growing on our tree. This is San Francisco, not Georgia or even the Central Valley of California. It amazes me that we can grow peaches with the lack of heat we have. They are not good eating peaches because they lack sweetness that the sun would bring, but add some sugar and bake and they are delicious. There aren't very many, mind you, maybe 9 or 10, but that's more than enough for a cobbler or two.

When I see the peaches I think of my grandmother. She could grow anything, anywhere, anytime. I am pretty sure that peach tree was her doing. And I wouldn't be surprised if it came to be simply because she threw a pit out the window into her garden. When I imagine the trajectory of her throw, the tree is in just about the right spot for that. And if anyone could make that work it would be her.

In my grandmothers last several years, she moved into what was designed to be the breakfast room. It is a sunny room in the back of the house overlooking the garden. And it really WAS a garden when she was here; there were flowers and vegetables everywhere. Grandma loved to look out the back window until her dying day at age 97.

Years later, when it became too difficult to carry Maggie upstairs to the bedrooms, we put her in that same breakfast room. We also added a deck off the back of the house opening to her room. The elevator was outside and brought her up to the deck so she could roll right into her room. She couldn't really look at the garden (not that there was much of one anymore) but she could hang out on the deck when it was nice.

I was often struck by the unlikely and very similar use that room had for my grandmother and my daughter.

Now we have to decide what to do with it.

Right now it is a sunny room with only a single chair and Maggie's dresser and bookcase in it. The single chair was the nurse's seat.We gave her bed to another child who could make use of Steve's ingenious design. Because of changes we made to accommodate Maggie it doesn't really work as a breakfast room anymore. The direct connection to the kitchen is no longer there. We have considered a family room, something this old house lacks. But now it's just Steve and I and we really don't need it. Perhaps an office, but I don't want to see all the paper and clutter all the time. The room is the access to the deck and the backyard and the only downstairs bathroom is  in that room, so it will have a lot of traffic.  There are lots of ideas, but really we haven't done a single thing to move any of these ideas forward.

Perhaps it just needs to sit as is for a while longer.

We can bring in an extra chair and enjoy some cobbler.

Custom Made

Maggie is not an off the rack girl. Things designed for the general public are generally not for her. Her wheelchair is customized, and our van is customized. Our house is not, but it has been adapted as much as possible. It is crowded, and making things fit is a constant struggle, especially because as she gets bigger, her equipment also grows. We routinely rearrange things, pushing chairs or table aside, just to move through a room.

The house is tall and narrow, exactly what you do not want when you have a wheelchair user. It is an ongoing challenge to make things work to accommodate her needs and her equipment. We have added a deck outside and a lift to get her to the first floor of the house. The only bathroom downstairs was remodeled to add a shower so we do not have to carry her upstairs. The access to that bathroom was changed around so we could get into it from her bedroom, which used to be the breakfast room.

Changing the function of a room is easy enough, but there are additional considerations. Taking away the breakfast room had a ripple effect. We made full use of that room as a catchall and family area. That is gone; now the entire downstairs has become the catchall. We eat all our meals in what is (or was) the formal dining room. However, since that doubles as my office our ability to utilize the table for dining is … infrequent, at best.

Maggie bedroom is the only direct access to the back deck so it functions as a pass through for everyone. Further, because it was designed as a breakfast room, her bedroom is not very large. Adding the shower in the bathroom ate up even more space in her room. None of those issues standing alone presents insurmountable challenges, but we reach critical mass when you combine those with the lack of any closet in her room.

No closet in a teenage girl’s bedroom!?! Imagine that for a minute. Nowhere to put her stuff. Nowhere to remove the equipment she doesn’t use every day. Nowhere to hide the machines that keep her fed, breathing, medicated and measured. Everyone can see the ceiling lift system, oxygen tank, pulse oximeter, nebulizer, feeding pump, suction machine and the machine that provides the mist while she sleeps. (I just realized I don’t know what that’s called). This little room looks like a hospital room. And there is nothing we can do about that.

The best part of her room is her bed. It was custom built for her and for this house by Steve. It is great and the fact that dad made it is cool. Part of Maggie’s disability, personality and vitality is her almost constant movement; this girl is in motion all the time. The movements are not always controlled and keeping her safe from falling is a challenge. The bed has high rails without looking like a crib, and it is high enough off the ground that the nurses (and me) are not constantly bending over to tend to her needs. Best of all there are drawers beneath it to store tons of medical supplies, tubes, etc. This maximizes the space and keeps it from looking too institutional.

Maggie loves this bed. She can move all she wants and toss things over the side with reckless abandon, and she does, regularly. This bed is what makes Maggie’s room MAGGIE’s room and not a converted breakfast room/pass through. This is what makes it a custom space.

Also.....Thanks for all the inquiries yesterday. Maggie and I continue to fight off whatever this bug is. The doctors changed her antibiotic, so hopefully she won't get any worse.